Lost Sea Review
Lost Sea is a 3D strategy-action game, developed by EastAsiaSoft, that takes place inside a procedurally generated archipelago. Players must form a crew of survivors and explore the surrounding islands as they hunt for the necessary resources to upgrade their ship and escape the Bermuda Triangle.
Lost Sea reminds me of some of the old-school action titles that you can pick up, play and beat in a few (3-4) hours. Players start off by choosing a character from a few choices, which include a mix of male and female characters. The only difference I could find in the characters is cosmetic, which is a little disappointing. Some differences between the characters would have be nice for replay value. The game starts off with your character getting stuck inside the Bermuda Triangle. Before long you find a machete and come upon a survivor that gives you a tutorial of the game. The entire first stage is a tutorial, which you can skip past and get to the other stages if you would like.
The game has five levels, or archipelagos, to explore that are split up into several islands that each lead to a boss fight. Players must lead their character through each stage and find stone tablets and survivors. These stone tablets are required to move on to other islands. Each stone tablet allows you to sail a certain number of islands through the archipelago and then you have to find more to continue on to other islands. Along with finding tablets, you will come across survivors. You can choose to have these survivors accompany your main character to provide assistance with hauling the tablets back to the dock area and also use one of their many skills, such as opening locked chests or repairing bridges, among other types of skills.
The graphics in Lost Sea are presented very well. The environments look great and is presented with a 3D top-down sort of view of your character, with the ability to move the camera with the right analog stick. The environments are full of color and the characters are all unique. Every island you explore is randomly generated, so you'll never truly play the same island each time you play the game, but I found the islands to have features that seem to repeat quite often, such as the same bridges or arches. Each archipelago have different types of environments, such as a desert island or a snow covered island, but as I stated, many of the features on these islands will be the same. The randomness of each island make the game replayable, but I think it would be even better if there were more features instead of repeating features all of the time.
The gameplay in Lost Sea is very simple. As I stated earlier, Lost Sea reminds me of some of the old-school action games from my childhood. One of the main reasons this game brings back those memories is that there is very limited saving in the game. Upon dying and restarting, you get a certain amount of coins and experience based on your progress during your previous play-through. There is also a stage select where you can choose between which archipelago to start at based on the areas you have reached in a previous play-through. There are no in-progress save files, so you have to worry about dying and losing much of what you have. At some points of the game I wished there was a one-time save where you could stop playing and then pick up progress later, but the game is just the right length to not be a necessity.
The combat system in Lost Sea is simple, but effective. As I mentioned before, while exploring the islands you will find fellow survivors that you can have join your crew. While they are helpful in many ways, combat is not their strong suit. Your crew members actually hide and cower in fear, instead of helping you in battle. I found this to be a little irritating at times.
Overall, Lost Sea is a good game to pick-up and play when you have a few hours to spare and want to feel some nostalgia from the days of past when there was no saving your game and coming back later. The game is fun and a great concept, I just wish the developers had put more environmental features in the game to avoid so many repetitions. You can purchase Lost Sea for $14.99 on the PSN Store.
I give this game 3/5